The circumstances surrounding the apparent assassination attempt on Saturday against Donald Trump, who was slightly injured after being shot at a campaign rally, remain unclear but are part of an American history marked by political violence.
• Read also: At Trump Rally, Panic and Prayers as Shots Ring Out
• Read also: Trump injured after gunfire leaves one dead at campaign rally
• Read also: ‘I am horrified’: Attack at Trump rally sparks global reaction
If this assassination attempt is confirmed, it would be the first since the one targeting former Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Assassinations of presidents including John F. Kennedy in 1963, assassination attempts targeting presidents or political figures: here is a brief history of some of these tragic events that have marked the political history of the United States.
The White House
Four Presidents Assassinated
The history of the United States is marked by the assassination of four presidents during their term, from Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963.
In total, four presidents have been shot by an assassin, the first of them being President Abraham Lincoln, killed in 1865 in his box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by an actor, John Wilkes Booth.
The second victim was James Garfield, 20th President of the United States, who died as a result of his attack on July 2, 1881 in Washington train station by Charles Guiteau, a lawyer who was desperate to find a job as a civil servant.
On September 6, 1901, while receiving dignitaries at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, William McKinley, 25th President of the United States, was wounded by an anarchist who fired numerous revolver bullets at him. He died a few days later from his injuries.
In more recent history, the most resounding occurred on November 22, 1963, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, JFK, was assassinated in Dallas.
That day, around 12:30 p.m., as the presidential limousine cuts through the crowd gathered along the streets of Dallas, shots ring out, John Fitzgerald Kennedy collapses, his wife Jackie at his side. The 35th The American president was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. from the hospital.
The JFK Assassination Commission concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine commando who had lived in the Soviet Union, had acted alone.
Several assassination attempts
Other assassination attempts were made against American presidents such as Andrew Jackson, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt narrowly escaped one of them, as did Gerald Ford, who survived two assassination attempts in 1975, both in California.
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was seriously injured by an unbalanced man, John Hinckley Jr., while leaving the Hilton Hotel in Washington. He remained in the hospital for twelve days.
Barack Obama was also the victim of an attempted assassination, according to CNN: an Idaho man was charged when he fired shots at the White House in 2011.
Getty Images via AFP
Violence in the countryside
JFK’s brother, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, a senator from New York and campaigning that year for the presidency of the United States, was shot dead in a Los Angeles hotel in 1968.
A few years later, in 1972, George Wallace, who was campaigning for the Democratic nomination, was targeted in an attempted bombing at a shopping mall in Maryland, which left him paralyzed for life.